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July 28, 2015

Adobe Presenter and Adobe Captivate have some overlapping functions. Both can create eLearning lessons that can be uploaded to and report results to a learning management system (LMS). Both can work with PowerPoint. Both can create interactive quizzes. And the list goes on. But what are the key differences that tell me which of these programs to buy? Or, if I already have both, which to use for any given project? Let's take a look.

Adobe Presenter is a PowerPoint add-in, and is marketed by Adobe specifically to educators. It is the easiest path from PowerPoint to eLearning. You can use it to take existing PowerPoint slides, add voiceover narration, optionally record a self-video while presenting the lesson, add eLearning scenes and characters, add interactive elements, add a quiz, and publish the lesson to an LMS. Presenter lessons can be used to "flip" the classroom--the homework is to watch the lecture, and then practice assignments, worked problems, and the like are done in the classroom with the teacher's help.

Presenter is designed so that eLearning features are easy to add. But, as is typical with any kind of software, the easier the software is to use, the fewer choices you have about certain things. In Adobe Presenter, this is a good thing. This software allows you to focus more on the content than on eLearning functionality. With this software, the feeling is that you are designing your content, and the software handles the work of deciding things like how the learner advances to the next slide. Your energy goes into your content.

For example, if you want to create a scenario, where the learner chooses options and receives feedback by traveling down various "branches" after decision points, you can click a few buttons, choose between pre-designed options, type your content on designated slides, and let Presenter take care of which button takes the learner to which slide. Your choices are somewhat limited, but getting a functioning scenario lesson up and running is fast and easy.

Adobe Captivate is powerful, stand-alone eLearning development software. It can import PowerPoint slides as the background and basic content of a project, but from that point on, the file is a Captivate project file. You are no longer in PowerPoint. In fact, using PowerPoint is just one of many options for how to create a Captivate project.

Arguably Captivate's greatest strength is the ability to create software demonstrations and simulations by simply recording screen actions as you do them. You can create still shots of each screen or record a live video of a procedure. Captivate can add text descriptions of the actions automatically. But after recording, you can edit the recorded steps to add highlights, additional captions, voiceover instructions, hints, feedback messages, and much more.

Rather than having a lot of automatic presets (although there are plenty of predesigned themes for colors, backgrounds, and fonts), Captivate puts you in control of the details of your lesson's appearance and functionality. What will the learner click to advance the lesson? You can create a button or make any part of the background a clickable object. Want a button that does multiple actions? You can create that. Want to add a screen character or multiple characters? Captivate lets you do that, too.

Want a branching scenario? You map it out, you add scenes or characters, you create the buttons that take your learner down the various branches. You have complete flexibility as to how the lesson proceeds. But you are on your own. You have to remember to add that "back" button that keeps your learner from reaching a dead end. You have to create all of the links and make sure they go in the correct sequence. You have all the power, but you also have all the work of making the eLearning project function.

So which should you use for what?

If you need software simulations: Captivate

If you need flexible, responsive lesson sizes for various learner devices: Captivate

If you have existing PowerPoint slides and want to record your lecture with them: Presenter

If you just want to focus on content, and want the rest to be mostly automatic: Presenter

If you want detailed control over sophisticated branching, interactions, timings, and functions: Captivate

Budget

Captivate is a highly advanced, fully functional eLearning software development tool, and its cost reflects that:

$999 to purchase

$29.99/month to subscribe, with a year's subscription minimum

Student/teacher edition: $299

Presenter is a PowerPoint add-in that gives you a lot of eLearning pizazz for a lot less development work and costs significantly less than Captivate:

May 12, 2015

You're developing an eLearning module in Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline. There's a slide that plays for 45 seconds. As you're listening to the audio, you'd like a screen object to appear in sync with the voiceover audio or some other screen action.

If the object in question is already on the slide, you can certainly select the object on the Timeline and drag it until its left edge gets to the desired part of the Timeline. Of course, if the slide is playing for a significant amount of time, that's going to require a lot of dragging.

One technique that I use when I want to match screen actions to voiceover audio is called Sync with Playhead (in Captivate) or Align with Playhead (in Storyline).

In the image below, I've positioned the Captivate Playhead on the Timeline by clicking at the top of the Timeline.

The technique is identical in Storyline (except as you'll see in the image below, the Playhead looks a bit different).

On the Timeline in either program, I can then right-click an object that I'd like to automatically move to the Playhead position and choose Sync with Playhead (Captivate) or Align with Playhead (Storyline).

April 16, 2015

If you've taken any of our Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, or Articulate Storyline classes, you are probably aware that these programs provide a selection of screen characters--cut-out pictures of professional actors in business, medical, or business-casual clothing posed as if they are talking to you. They are intended for use as a kind of avatar of the trainer.

There is research that shows that using a screen character as a pedagogical agent or learning coach, who speaks informally and appears to be giving the lesson, increases learning. (My reference for this is Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer, eLearning and the Science of Instruction.)

Over the past few weeks, I've had multiple students ask how hard it would be to use themselves as the learning coach. Believe it or not, becoming a pedagogical agent is easier than you think.

Put Your Picture into the Lesson. Place a professional head shot of yourself, your trainer, or expert on the introductory slide (including job title, credentials, etc.), and then have that individual record the audio narration for the project.

Create your own screen characters. Photograph your expert on a green screen background for a full set of screen characters in various poses. The IconLogic Blog has a whole series of articles on how to do this:

Create cartoons of yourself or your in-house experts. You can use the images over and over in on-going training videos. Here is one article to get you started: Using Bitstrips Characters.

If you don't have specific, known individuals in your company to act as your learning coaches, you are not stuck with the same four or five actors that come with your software. You can purchase additional screen characters from The eLearning Brothers. Or you can just make good use of some inexpensive clip art. By trimming out the background in ordinary office photographs, you can get some nice effects.

Whether you use generic actors or your own home-grown experts, screen characters are an excellent way to add the personalization, engagement, and local feel that will bring your eLearning to the next level.

April 13, 2015

Over the years I've had more than a few eLearning development clients ask us to create links to web resources on a slide. There's more than one way to accomplish the task. Over the next couple of weeks I'll discuss some of my favorite techniques. Up first, text hyperlinks.

To create a text hyperlink, select some text (the text can be contained within a text caption or a smart shape). Then, on the Properties Inspector, select the Style tab. From the Character area, click the Insert Hyperlink tool.

From the Link To drop-down menu, choose Web Page. Next, type a web address into the field.

Prior to clicking the OK button, visit the drop-down menu to the right of the web address. I think it's a good idea to select New from the list of options. (This will ensure that the page that appears after the learner clicks is a new page or tab, rather than a page that replaces the current lesson.)

When previewed in a web browser, the text hyperlink will look similar to the image below. If clicked, the learner will be taken to the web address you specified in the Link To area.

Should you change your mind about the text hyperlink, removing the link is as simple as selecting the text and, back on the Properties Inspector, clicking the Remove Hyperlink tool.

March 19, 2015

Using Captivate's Text to Speech feature allows you to quickly convert written text to voiceover audio. It's an awesome feature. However, we recently had a client who felt that Paul (that was the Speech Agent we used for the project) spoke too fast. The client wanted to know if we cloud slow him down a bit.

While you might think that controlling the cadence used by the Speech Agent was beyond your control, it's actually really easy. Prior to converting a slide note to speech, just add a bit of code (known as Voice Text Markup Language or VTML) to the text.

For example, if you want a Speech Agent to say I am an awesome person, all that you would normally have to do is write the text in the Notes window, click the TTS check box and then click Text to Speech.

In the Speech Management dialog box, select a Speech Agent and then click Generate Audio.

If you feel like the resulting voiceover audio is too fast or too slow, you can change the speed. In the slide Note, add the following code in front of the text: <vtml_speed value="50">. At the end of the text, type </vtml_speed>.

Click the Text to Speech button and regenerate the audio (the existing audio will be replaced with the new audio file). You'll find that the agent's speed has been cut in half (thanks to the 50 you added as part of the VTML code). You can experiment with the speed values until you find a speed that works best for you and/or your client.

If you'd like to learn more about VTML or see more tags, review the users guide for the VTML Tag Set by clicking here.

February 24, 2015

Zoom Areas are typically used to emphasize an important area of a slide background. They are especially useful if you want your learner to automatically get closer to a specific area of the screen.

To insert a Zoom Area, click Objects on the Main Toolbar and choose Zoom Area.

Zoom Areas consist of two parts: the area of a background that you want to highlight (Zoom Source) and where the zoomed area of the background will appear (Zoom Destination).

In the image below, I have positioned and resized the Zoom Source over the area of the slide background that I want to get larger.

Then I positioned and resized the Zoom Destination on the slide. Remember, the Zoom Source won't move or resize when the lesson is viewed by the learner... that's the job of the Zoom Destination.

Right away you can see that there is a problem with the image in the Zoom Destination. Because a Zoom Area simply enlarges the Zoom Source, and I've resized the Zoom Destination quite a bit, the image in the Zoom Destination is blurry.

To fix the problem, you'll need a larger version of the image shown within the Zoom Source. In this case, I have the original photo of the handsome male model shown on the screen (in addition to being much larger, it has also been cropped similar to the image in the Zoom Source).

To swap out the blurry image in the Zoom Destination with the better image, double-click the Zoom Destination to open the Properties Inspector. On the Properties Inspector, click Add new image.

Click the Import button and open the larger version of the photo.

Compare the Zoom Destination below with the version above. The quality of the Zoom Destination image is much better.

More and more people are using mobile devices to access content. You know this and realize that the mobile world is different than the desktop world. You're ready to take the plunge into designing and developing true mobile learning, but where do you start?

During this session, Joe will explain the pros and cons of including certain instructional design features and show how to design and develop alternatives for those elements that will not work on mobile devices. In addition, Joe will discuss features that you may find advantageous when implementing mobile learning. Joe will also make himself available for questions and answers and hopes you'll weigh in with your own observations and experience!

In this session, you will learn to:

Apply the correct features to a mobile learning design that will also work for desktop.

January 22, 2015

I've written about Captivate's Smart Shapes a few times since Adobe first introduced them. If you want to know what they are, check out this article. If you want to learn how to use Smart Shapes as buttons, I've got you covered. This time I'm going to cover how you can use Smart Shapes instead of Text Captions in just about every development scenario.

Since Smart Shapes are far more flexible (when it comes to formatting) than standard buttons or text captions, I'd love to see Adobe completely replace text captions and buttons with Smart Shapes down the road (perhaps Captivate 9... 10?). As it stands, standard text captions are used whenever you record a software simulation or enable feedback captions for interactive objects (you can use Hint, Success, and Failure captions for Click Boxes, Buttons, and Text Entry Boxes).

If you'd like to use Smart Shapes instead of Text Captions during the Software Simulation recording process, open Captivate's Preferences dialog box (Edit menu if you're using Windows; Adobe Captivate menu if you're using a Macintosh).

From the Recording group at the left side of the dialog box, select Modes. Finally, for each mode you'd like to use, enable Add Text Captions and Use Smart Shapes instead of Captions. You can select the type of Smart Shape you want to use via the Smart Shape Type drop-down menu.

When you record your next Software Simulation, the standard Text Captions will automatically be replaced with Smart Shapes.

As I mentioned above, you can also use Smart Shapes instead of standard captions when adding Hint, Success, and Failure captions. It's a simple set up (assuming you're using Adobe Captivate 8.1), reopen the Preferences dialog box. From the Category list, select Defaults. Lastly, from the General area, select Use Smart-Shapes for SFH Captions instead of Text Captions.

The next time you enable Hint, Success, or Failure captions for an interactive object (via the Properties Inspector), the feedback captions will automatically be Smart Shapes.

If you'd like to change the shape of the Smart Shape, it's a simple matter of selecting the shape and, on the Properties Inspector, using the Basic drop-down menu.

November 05, 2014

I received an interesting email from a fellow Captivate developer who was in a bit of a pickle. The developer had imported a 60-slide PowerPoint presentation into Captivate and then added audio to each of the Filmstrip slides.

Just as he was about to Publish his finished project, he was told to use a different PowerPoint presentation. Mind you, it wasn't just that the imported presentation had changed and he needed to update it in Captivate. In that case, all he would have had to do is click the presentation's red "not in synch" icon on the library and the new PowerPoint content would have come into the Captivate project. In this instance, he was given a completely different presentation (the same audio was going to be used, but each slide visual was going to change).

Since the developer had already invested time importing the 60 audio files (files he was going to use on the replacement slides), he contacted me hoping he wasn't going to have to start over from scratch.

The bottom line is he didn't have to start over again and was able to reuse all of the imported audio files. Here's what I instructed him to do:

First, visit the Library and rename the audio files so the name of each audio file matches the slide where it was used. (To rename a Library item, right-click the item and choose Rename.)

In the image below, notice that I've renamed my audio files so the names match the slide that's currently using them (slide1Audio, slide2Audio, etc.).

Next, delete all of the imported PowerPoint slides. Because Captivate projects must have at least one slide, if your project only contains PowerPoint slides, insert a blank slide first (via Insert > New Slide From). Then delete all of the slides except the blank one.

The above step can seem extreme and nerve-wracking because you're deleting all of those awesome slides. But keep in mind you'll be replacing the deleted slides with new slides in just a moment.

Check out the Library. Even though you deleted the slides, the audio files are still in the Library. Notice the Use Count shows a bunch of zeros because none of the audio files are being used.

October 28, 2014

Let's face it, some of the eLearning content you are required to create is a bit... shall we say, dry? A tad boring? A teeny bit heavy on the text and short on graphics?

One easy way to spruce up your eLearning content is to add characters (or guides). But where do you find quality images to use as guides? The good news is that both Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate offer some awesome, and most importantly, free Characters--out of the box.

Let's take a look at the Character features in both programs. While Characters have been around for several years in Captivate, and in both versions of Storyline, the images below are taken from the most recent versions of both programs, Captivate version 8; Storyline version 2.

Articulate Storyline 2

To insert a Character on a Storyline slide, open a slide and from the Insert tab on the Ribbon, click Character. You'll find two choices in the Character drop-down menu: Illustrated Character and Photographic Character.

In the image below, I've selected Illustrated Character, which opened the Characters dialog box. From here, you'll find multiple Characters, Expressions, and Poses.

I found the Expression options particularly cool... plenty from which to choose.

Shown below are Storyline's many poses. And if you look in the lower right of the dialog box, you'll even find three pose directions (Left, Front, Right).

And perhaps my favorite thing about Storyline's Characters is how easy it is to change the appearance of an inserted Character. In the Image below, notice that you can select a Character and totally change it to another character, change its Expression, Pose... even its Perspective. Simply awesome!

If you'd rather work with Photographic Characters, go back to the Character drop-down menu and choose Photographic Characters. As with the Illustrated Characters, you'll find multiple actors and poses.

Adobe Captivate 8

To insert a Character in Adobe Captivate, simply choose Media> Characters.

Similar to Storyline, Captivate's Characters dialog box presents you with several Categories, Characters, and Poses. (In the image below, I've selected a Character and Pose from the Business Category.)

If Captivate's Illustrated Characters work better for you, choose Illustrated from the Category drop-down menu and you'll be presented with four Illustrated Characters and various poses.

If you want to change the Character's pose in Captivate, you'll need to manually delete the Character from the slide and replace it with another (not as cool as Storyline's edit-on-the-fly technique, but perfectly functional).

Note: The Characters shown above aren't limited to Storyline and Captivate. You'll find many of the same Characters in Presenter.

Downloadable eLearning Characters

If you're not happy with the selection of characters that come with those programs, you'll find resources on the web offering thousands of eLearning characters. While you'll need to purchase those characters (typically in groups or packs), you are almost guaranteed to find the perfect character to fit within your scene.